Downingtown Area's Team Sab-BOT-age competes at robotics championship

DOWNINGTOWN — Downingtown Area Robotics’ Competition Team 1640 placed in the top four alliances held at the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Championship on April 27.

The local robotics team, also known as Team Sab-BOT-age, was in one of the top four alliances, which are composed of 12 teams, at the championship held in St. Louis, Mo. This year, 2,546 robotics teams from 16 countries participated in 77 regional and district competitions, culminating in the championship.

In this year’s robotics competition, which ran April 24 to 27, alliances tried to score as many flying discs into their goals as possible then climb their pyramid during the two-minute and 15-second match.

As part of their alliance, Team 1640 advanced to the championship by winning the Mid-Atlantic Robotics Region Championship, held April 11 to 13 at Lehigh University’s Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pa. The event capped off seven weeks of district qualifying competitions involving the 109 robotics teams in the tri-state area, which included eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

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During these qualifying events, 1640 distinguished itself and won the Creativity Award, sponsored by Xerox, and the Innovation in Control Award, sponsored by Rockwell Automation.

At the championship, four divisions — Archimedes, Curie, Galileo and Newton — each with 100 robotics teams, competed for the chance to play on the Einstein field, the championship finals.

After eight qualification matches on the Newton Division field, Team 1640 was ranked 24th out of a hundred other teams.

In alliance selections for the elimination rounds, the team was selected by a fellow Mid-Atlantic Robotics team, Team 303 “TEST Team” from Bridgewater High School in Bridgewater, N.J.

Team 303 was the captain of the third-ranked alliance, which included Team 3479, Code Orange, from Dana Point, Calif., as well as Team 1640.

The alliance went undefeated in the three elimination rounds, where alliances had to score best two out of three matches. By winning, they became champions of the Newton Division and earned their chance to play on the Einstein field with the other three division-winning alliances.

On the Einstein field, Team 1640 won its first semifinal match against the Galileo Division champions. However, it did not win the next two matches and the Galileo Division champions then went on to become the overall robotics champions in the finals.

The robotics competition championship challenged teams of 25 students or more to raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors, stimulating real-world engineering.

Team 1640 was started in 2005 with a Downingtown High School East teacher and 12 students and this season won four awards.